The Retention Soil Filter Plus and received encouragement towards its practical implementation. An encouragement for increased application of this combined natural and engineering treatment system. (LinkedIn)

The Ernst Kuntze Prize serves to encourage young scientists and practitioners in research and invention leading to practical improvements in water or wastewater treatment and management. It is awarded by DWA, the German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste

Their press release of 26 October highlights the unique features of the RSFplus concept:

Andrea F. Brunsch, Heinrich Dahmen, Katharina Knorz and Robert Krump have developed a retention soil filter for further cleaning of the sewage treatment plant effluent from organic micropollutants and inorganic trace substances. They also showed the positive effect of special additives on the retention of these compounds. The flexibly used retention soil filter also treats the combined sewer overflow during rain events. A corresponding large-scale plant was built at the Erftverband and put into operation in autumn 2019. The simple technology of a retention soil filter comes with low operating costs; the annual costs are only around 30 percent compared to the currently discussed methods for removing organic micropollutants.

The10th International Symposium on Managed Aquifer Recharge took place from May20-24, 2019, in Madrid, Spain. AquaNES was respresented with a number of talks and posters around cNES in relation to bank filtration and soil infiltration for groundwater recharge.

Marie was awarded for her work on intensive monitoring and characterisation of the water quality and hydrogeology at the site as to better understand mechanism and define leverage points for improving the scheme. Eventually these data fed into the development of an ICT tool for optimised operation of the site.